So, I have fired up Final Fantasy XIII-2 and used the option to recap FF XIII's plot to get up to date. I have watched Spoony's review of the game earlier, and thought that maybe the information combined from that and the recap will allow to me to understand what was going on in the game. Long story short, it did not - I still cannot make any sense out of it. Can anybody here make a reasonable summary or maybe point me to someplace on the net that will present the story in a comprehensive way?
Unfortunately FXIII plot in game is hard to solve out without actually writing down facts and trying to figure it out.
Gist of it:
There two worlds (Pulse and Cocoon) with two sets of gods one for each word. Naturally those gods don't like each other. There is ruble between them and then long calm. Humans trive at that time of calm on cocoon and gods war is legend at that point for common people but very real thing for cocoon goverment.
So near Bruhl Lighting sister, Sarah after she got hitched with Snow finds a old structure and like kids they go there for fun. Turns out that structure had god inside from that other set of gods who don't like gods from Sarah and Lighting world. Gods like in ancient greek mythology love to use mortals for their fighting so that god branded Sarah which meant two things:
1: She had a goal decided by her master
2: If she didn't fulfill it in time she will turn into a monster
Either way she was fucked. Ok sooo... after than that structure was found out by goverment which like i said earlier didn't forget gods wars and they knew about gods that liked to brand people with missions. They decided to purge whole village to Pulse and naturally they didn't even plan to send them there, just outright kill them. They even had trains like nazis.
So Lighting and Snow start a rebelion on those trains. Fighting fighting. Snow gives gun to Hope's mother, she takes it willingly "mom's are tough". Hope's mother dies later and kid named Hope blames Snow for death of his mother. Vanille late meets Hope. She is insane and takes Hope to Snow for some unknown reason. Lighting also has companion Sahz from train (which was at that time in village so he also got on train) which behaves like token black guy being token black guy.
All them decide to see that Sarah god which was transported. They all meet each other just before its chamber. Sarah becomes crystal which suggest her goal was to get all those people together on that gods transport. They all meat god which attacks them. They defeat it and like in any anime ever they are fucked. They all got branded now.
40h later of corridor fights party arrives at Pulse world and they learn that Pulse is wild as fuck but it isn't evil. Just dinos eating each other. They also find old city called Oerba full of fallen L'cie which suggest that all those city people were used by gods and failed to meet their goal. Vanille and Fang (which joined them later) were from that city. Both of them also were once in crystal state and they lived through it. They all also notice that they all dream of ragnarock aka some superbeast that is supposed to destroy coocoon. Well that is your mission morons. So they have to destroy Coocoon which naturally isn't something they like.
30-40h of exploring awesome Pulse, fighting awesome monsters and such party decides that clock is ticking and better to deal with their mission or they will turn into monsters. So the go back to Cocoon and at the same time Pulse gods again lay siege to Coocoon via monsters from Pulse. Chaos ensues. Lots of bay cutscenes. Cocoon goverment are discovered to be actual cocoon gods. From power source which is god itself, to brain of organization which is another god and so on. Which esentially means that killing those gods means destroying cocoon.
Party doesn't know what to do so they do what they are told to do and hope everything gonna be ok. So they destroy those gods and after that they all turn into monsters (failed their focus?). Through unfified power of friendship love and shitty story they all turn back normal deal with final god. CHAOS. PLANET IS DYING. PLANET IS FALLING FROM SKY !!! DFASDFASFD.
Then Vanille and Fang join hands in lesbomancy magic and they become ragnarock. Huge crystal like serpernt hyrdra. Instead of destroying world it creates pillar from Pulse to Cocoon upon which Coocoon lies down.
For some reason Sarah wakes up on Pulse and she meets all of other members beside vanille fang and for some reason lighting.
THE END
FFXIII-2 Turns out Etro which is ultimate goddes of all gods have own dimension which is named valhalla and she right now is in kind of a pinch beacuse she fights with chaos. So for some reason she called Lighting from her world to became her tsundere knight.
YES you heard it. They used power of shitty writing to have XIII-2 and lighting doesn't have any place in it than just because.
And now you will be fighting with ultimate shitty plot device TIME TRAVEL and What if scenarios !
All of this to have XIII-3 where your favorite tsundere knight can wear all costumes some yellow dude fapped over in his spare time.
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Generally XIII plot is easy to understand but designers decided that they should tell that story unlineary with those 13 days retrospections which totaly made no sense to begin with and absolutely no reason to.